Jenin, Jenin

Haaretz 17.1.2008
By Gideon Levy

It's cold in the alleys of the Jenin refugee camp; it's even colder indoors. Cold that is absorbed between the thin walls at night is trapped in the unheated, frozen spaces, even when the sun rises. Wrapped in their coats, their teeth chattering from the cold, the people sit and switch between Al-Aqsa, the Hamas TV channel, and Falastin, the Fatah channel, spending their empty days staring. One sees mainly dead bodies on these channels. Bodies carried to ambulances, bodies lying in refrigerators, and for the sake of variety, the injured being rushed to neglected hospitals, mainly in Gaza. A daily loop of death. In the home of Jamal Zbeidi, a member of the camp committee, the television also silently spews out pictures of death. We have visited his home dozens of times, but he has never sounded so desperate, he has never been so totally hopeless about everything - the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Israel, the United States, the Arab world, the entire world. In the streets, barefoot children with no future are playing with junk. The camp's pathetic Internet cafe was deserted this week, as does the entry checkpoint to the city from Israel. We were delayed at this checkpoint for nearly three hours this week because of the Israel Defense Forces' cumbersome and absurd bureaucracy. Military vehicles are almost the only cars still entering the heavy iron gate at the entrance to Jenin, a major Palestinian city. Jenin is the most dying city in the territories; its refugee camp is the epitome of desperation and danger.
The pictures of death from Gaza reach Jenin on television, but young people are killed here as well, almost every week. The latest victim fell in the neighboring village of Al Yamun. Fawaz Frihat was 17 and a half when he died. The IDF invades the city's refugee camp every night, sowing panic and sleeplessness. There are almost no wanted men left here, but the IDF doesn't give up. "Nobody knows where we're going," says Zbeidi, beginning his depressing monologue. A few days ago the Palestinians once again confiscated his Subaru, his second car to be taken this way. When we visited the camp in the summer we saw the first one being confiscated. Zbeidi feels humiliated. He says the police sell the stolen cars to spare-parts dealers who take them apart and use the money to renovate their offices. Zbeidi bought the car for NIS 2,500, but the PA forces lie in wait every time people leave the camp. The Palestinian soldiers never dare to enter the camp itself. The residents' bitterness toward the PA is reaching new heights: "Has the PA already solved the refugee problem? Removed the Israeli occupation? Protected the residents from the IDF? And now only the problem of the stolen vehicles remains," Zbeidi adds bitterly. After his second car was confiscated, Zbeidi's youngest son, who is around 15, went to the Palestinian police checkpoint and tried to grab a weapon from a policeman. He wanted to avenge the blow to his father's dignity, and in the end was arrested for a few days. It could have been worse. As decided in the agreement for disarming wanted men, Jamal's famous nephew, Zakariya Zubeidi, spends his nights at police headquarters - and his days in idleness. Zakariya's three brothers are all imprisoned in Israeli jails. "Nobody knows where we're going," repeats his uncle Jamal, "and the civil war is approaching. "Israel has won. There has never been a situation like this. Everyone wants only his life. People have lost all hope. Abu Mazen [PA President Mahmoud Abbas] is going against the people. With his peace we won't get anywhere. Abu Mazen is talking to the Israelis, and do you think he'll get anything? Nothing. He can talk to them forever and won't get anything. Hamas is no different. Let all the parties and organizations tell us where we're going. Nobody knows anything, nobody is doing anything for the people. Neither Abu Mazen nor Hamas. "People watch the Falastin station and try to believe what Abu Mazen is saying. Afterward they switch to Al-Aqsa and believe what Hamas is saying. They are killing each other and both make arrests, and everyone is lying. It's all a lie. Abbas arrests Hamas in the West Bank, Haniyeh and aZahar arrest Fatah in Gaza, everybody makes a video clip on his television station and the Palestinians spends all day between Fatah and Hamas," he says, referring to two top Hamas leaders in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh and Mahmoud al-Zahar. "And Israel - nobody remembers what Israel is doing to us. Everyone is busy with the civil war. In Gaza people are killed every day by Israel, every day four or five, and Haniyeh and Zahar don't care." A few minutes' drive to the northwest and we're in the village of Al Yamun. Only isolated posters in the streets commemorate the latest victim, Fawaz Frihat. Death, even that of a high school student from the village, has become banal here, boring routine. Once the entire village would be covered with mourning posters for its fallen, but no longer. A few days ago the U.S. president visited not far from here as the crow flies, on the summit of the Mount of Beatitudes, but who cares. On the balcony of the fallen boy's home sit his gloomy-looking family and friends. His picture, courtesy of Islamic Jihad, is pasted on the wall of the house, and in it he is armed nearly head to foot. Fawaz was also armed at his death, and his friends and relatives say little about him or the circumstances of his killing. His father, Awani, 49, who is wearing a kaffiyeh and looks much older than his age, worked in Israel until the tragedy, excavating the Carmel Tunnel. All week long he would sleep in an apartment in Tirat Hacarmel and return home to Al Yamun on Thursdays. On Saturday two weeks ago he parted from his son for the last time. Last Monday night they called him at the apartment and informed him that his son had been killed. He returned home immediately, and is very worried that he will not be able to go back to work in Israel. Bereaved Palestinian fathers are automatically denied the right to work in Israel, for fear they will take revenge. That Monday, Fawaz and his brother Mohammed, who is sitting with us now, got up in the morning. It was a school holiday because of the Muslim new year, so Fawaz stayed home. As a 12th grader he was studying for his matriculation exams. His father says that that morning his private math tutor came to the house. Nobody on the balcony is willing to say whether Fawaz was active in Islamic Jihad's military arm, the Al-Quds Brigades, as is claimed; nobody ever saw him armed before. He went out at noon to pray in the mosque and didn't return. A Palestinian Web site reports that he was armed with a homemade rifle when he was killed by IDF soldiers. Fawaz was killed in Wadi Hassan, the valley dividing Al Yamun and Burkin, west of Jenin. The three friends who went out with him that day to the wadi were arrested in the village after fleeing from the area where he was killed. Before that they managed to tell Mohammed, the brother, that Fawaz had been standing armed at the side of the road warning drivers that the IDF was in the area. Mohammed says his brother was the one who opened fire on the soldiers, and they returned fire. A claim heard on the balcony, to the effect that his body was brought to the hospital in handcuffs, was quickly refuted: In the afternoon we drove to the Red Crescent offices in Jenin, where the ambulance drivers who delivered Fawaz's body after his death told us he was not handcuffed. The death certificate was signed by Dr. Mohammed Abadi of the Martyr Dr. Khalil al-Suleiman Hospital - named after the director of the emergency room of the Jenin hospital who was killed in an ambulance during the IDF invasion during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002. Dr. Abadi says: "Fawaz Frihat arrived dead at the hospital from shots fired by the Israeli occupation forces, which hit him in the following places: a bullet in his left wrist, a bullet in the stomach, a bullet in the chest, a bullet in the left shoulder and in the right foot and left foot - two bullets in each foot." Back at Zbeidi's house, "Everyone who can, leaves," he says at supper, which is served in the spirit of the times, without meat. "Everyone is afraid of the PA. You can't say a word. Say a word and you'll be arrested. But you think about Fatah and ask: What have they done for us? And you think about Hamas and ask: What have they done for us? If you meet someone on the road now and ask him - 'Where are you going?' - he won't be able to answer. Nobody knows where he's going. "Listen, I'm pleased that Zakariya wasn't killed all these years. But is this his fate? Walking around the streets doing nothing? A year and a half ago the armed men were still in control here. Now nobody's in control. The war against stolen cars and that's it. Israel has won." Evening fell on the houses in the camp. On the slopes we saw groups of young people making bonfires to warm up and pass another evening somehow. At about 2 A.M. or a half hour later the IDF will come again. The IDF Spokesperson confirms that while on patrol, the IDF did shoot in the direction of an armed individual, who was a known Islamic Jihad activist. The army further emphasizes that Fawaz Frihat was armed. The incident was investigated and it was found that the IDF force acted in accordance with regulations.